Date: 1942

"I shall keep them [my thoughts] to myself for a time, and when I am older / They will shine as a white worm shines under a green boulder."

— Smith, Stevie (1902-1971)

Date: November 11, 1967

"Because suddenly, from a height of thousands of centuries, the first stone of an avalanche came tumbling down: it was my heart."

— Lispector, Clarice (1920-1977)

Date: 1970

"Words came without volition, sinking very slowly through his mind like pebbles."

— Murdoch, Iris (191-1999)

Date: 1995

"Soul is the place, / stretched like a surface of millstone grit between body and mind, / where such necessity grinds itself out"

— Carson, Anne (b. 1951)

Date: 1999

"On its own this trigger, as we can see from the earlier definition, is not going to generate consciousness. Imagine a candyfloss machine with a stick in the centre that then gathers more and more candyfloss as time goes on. Think of the epicentre as the stick in the centre, the burgeoning candy...

— Greenfield, Susan (b. 1950)

Date: 1999

"Perhaps the consciousness of dreaming is the almost random formation of little groups forming in different configurations like pebbles thrown very gently into the water. One can imagine the gentle ripples easily being displaced by the next pebble as it hits the water."

— Greenfield, Susan (b. 1950)

Date: 1999

"The next day, I changed all my classmates’ names to numbers to better reflect their metal hearts."

— Offill, Jenny (b. 1968)